WINTERSET, IA — Tucked into a corner of the Fareway grocery store in Winterset, IA, is one powerhouse of an in-store bakery. It’s one of more than a dozen that help supply and deliver baked goods to nearly 140 stores in the Boone, IA-based Fareway Stores grocery chain. As the grocer grows, so does its Fareway Bakery unit, led by bakery sales specialists Sarah Chapman and Amanda Munson, who split responsibilities for the bakeries between them.
Within the walls of the Winterset bakery, a 15-person crew produces everything from bread and buns to donuts, following a comprehensive bakery program that features a well-balanced blend of products made from scratch, frozen dough and mixes.
Along with bread, buns and donuts, the bakery produces a range of baked goods expected of any in-store bakery: pies, muffins and cakes, including made-to-order custom cakes. It also creates Fareway’s signature items: Scotcheroos (an Iowa staple), Salted Nut Bars, No Bake Cookies, Magic Bars, Monster Cookies, Cinnamon and Caramel Pecan Rolls, fresh hamburger buns, and a variety of snack mixes.
All Fareway in-store bakeries function the same and follow a simple, efficient and well-orchestrated production process. At Winterset, the center island is the focal point of activity. It’s where the rolling, cutting, packaging and labeling of product for the store’s own displays and the stores it serves take place.
The crew navigates effortlessly around the island, their movements purposeful, synchronized and always busy.
“All of our bakeries are like this, just go, go, go,” Sarah said. “A lot of people and a lot of production in a small space, and we make it work.”
Here, the hustle begins at 5 a.m. each day. That’s when Angel Eckstein, the bakery’s manager, arrives to turn on the lights, heat up the oven and get the proofer going. Then, she turns her attention to the “recap list,” which details store orders and guides that day’s baking schedule.
To the uninitiated, the first glimpse of the pages-long list can be daunting — the entire first page is dedicated to just bread and buns. That’s where Fareway Bakery’s flare for efficiency comes in.
Each morning, the stores place their bakery orders using I-5, Fareway’s name for its online baked goods ordering catalog. The software system generates the recap list, which Angel and her team review each afternoon, so they know exactly what they’ll need to produce for each store when they step into the bakery the next morning. They also check Winterset’s bakery shelves and add those items to the list.
The recap list helps the crew determine which doughs they need to pan overnight.
“We set out the dough we need the night before so it’s ready to proof and bake in the morning,” Angel said. “As soon as the bakers arrive in the morning, they start pulling dough from the coolers and prepping it for the proofer. As they’re doing that, I review the recap list again and write down what I need for my own shelves.”
After Angel reconciles her lists, she passes them along to the early-morning crew, which gets the day’s baking underway. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, three people come in at 5 a.m. On Saturday mornings — donut days — there are four. On the other days, a crew of two opens the store, with others arriving at 6 a.m. The bakery relies on a handful of part-time people to fill in when needed.
“We also pull out cookies the night before so they are ready to pan up in the morning and bake,” Angel added. “Most of what the team has to do is bars, brownies and coffee cakes, most of which are already made up in the bunker. We bake the bases ahead of time and top them as we need to.”
Prepping ahead makes morning production more manageable for the bakery crew.
“Because half of the list was already taken care of the day before, it’s not as intimidating in the morning, and I can take care of the other half,” Angel said.
The morning is spent baking, icing, cutting, labeling and packaging product.
“Our Monster Cookies, Scotcheroos and No Bake Cookies are all made from scratch,” Angel said. “Our cream cake products are made using a base where we just add water and the flavor we want. Our drop cookies are also cream-based, and our regular cookies come in pucks that we can just pan and bake.”
The afternoon is spent checking delivery orders, making sure each one is accurately filled and ready to go out first thing in the morning. Then, Angel pulls the new recap list, and the cycle begins again as the crew starts the prep work for the next day, moving dough, cookie pucks, pastry bites and other items that need to thaw overnight from the freezer to the cooler.
This story has been adapted from the December | Q4 2023 Craft to Crumb mini-mag. Read the full story in the digital issue here.
